One More Empty Night
by keslei
Summary: The only thing worse than having nothing is having everything and then losing it all. And this is the story of Peter Bishop's life. He knows now that the universe is cruel, giving only to take away - he has lived this enough times to be sure of that.


_I spent so long imagining going down that path with you, imagining what it would be like to wake up in a bed next to you, to sit around, just the two of us, having a cup of coffee, reading the paper. And then, finally, I had it. I've seen what the two of us together looks like. And it's beautiful._  
_- Peter Bishop - 6B_

* * *

It's been a week since he found out the happiness he had was all a lie, since he discovered the woman in his bed was not really her - a week where he has gone back to sleeping alone.

But tonight is the first time his bed has felt so cold and empty, the first time he's wondered if he'll be sleeping alone for the rest of his life.

He can still hear her words from earlier, the ones that had rung out in the cold night air, while the pain in her voice cut him to the heart.

_"She wasn't me. How could you not see that?... And I don't want to be with you. She's taken everything."_

Lying alone in the darkness, he wants nothing more than to rewind the last two months and do them over again, as he realizes that he may have lost his only chance to be with her. History can't be rewritten, and right now he doubts that she'll ever be able to look at him the same way again, even if she does eventually forgive him. After all, everything she said to him was entirely true, and after utterly failing her, he can't even stand himself.

So he rolls over in the bed that now seems much too large, trying to accept this ache in his heart as a sufficient punishment for his failures, to hold back the tears that threaten to leak out as he remembers how hurt she is, and how this is all his fault. And as he shifts, as his gaze falls on the empty half of the bed and his fingers brush cool sheets, the enormity of what he's lost overwhelms him.

For a few weeks, he thought he had a chance at spending forever with her, but he was so wrong.

And now, he is left with cold sheets and silent tears.

She really has taken everything.

* * *

_What is hell? Hell is oneself,_  
_Hell is alone, the other figures in it _  
_Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from _  
_And nothing to escape to. One is always alone._  
_- The Cocktail Party - T.S. Eliot_

* * *

It's been days since his world ended in an instant - four, or maybe five, he doesn't really know anymore. Time, like everything else, has no meaning without her. Around him, the world goes on without noticing that anything is different, without caring that Olivia Dunham is no longer there, but for him, nothing is the same. And nothing will ever be the same again.

He spoke at her funeral tonight, did his best to capture in a few brief words all that she was, all that she meant to him. But he failed miserably. There just aren't words to describe it, to even come close to touching the joy that they had together, and the emptiness in his soul now that she's gone.

_"Olivia Dunham... my wife... was everything to me... She was strong and beautiful and fearless... She was so stubborn, never gave up on me, or on our world... She was my world..."_

All true, and yet so very far from the whole truth.

The truth is, he doesn't want to go on without her, doesn't even know if he can. When she slumped lifeless to the concrete, his heart shattered into a million pieces. And though the pain of it was initially numbed by shock, hidden underneath the haze in which he has been existing, he can feel it now - the anguish of a heart that can never be whole again, of a soul that has nothing left.

The orange glow of streetlights reflected through patches of amber seeps in through the window, as he sits silently in the darkness of the home where they were once so happy, remembering how just last week he surprised her with a romantic home-cooked candlelit dinner, how they talked about everything and nothing, how her eyes lit up when she smiled. The memories are a sweet torture - so beautiful that the tears stream down his cheeks as he realizes that he will never hear her laugh again, will never again see the smile that she reserved for him and him alone.

When he finally moves towards the bedroom, the sight of that empty bed is another terrible reminder of what he will never have again, as the memories sweep over him in full force, of all the things he misses so much - falling asleep with his arms around her, the softness of her skin against his, even her cheerfulness at ungodly hours of the morning. And even when he flees the room, slamming the door behind him, the memories are still there, no matter how much he drinks or where he goes.

He always wondered what would finally break him. Now he knows. To have had so much, and to have it all ripped away - this is hell; this is the end of his world. So tonight, he drinks himself into oblivion, but even then he can't escape the truth.

She was everything to him.

And now he is alone forever.

* * *

_Nobody remembers me here. Olivia looks at me like I'm a stranger, like she's afraid of me._  
_- Peter Bishop - Novation_

* * *

It's been a week since he returned to existence in a world that doesn't know him, and he doesn't want to spend even one more day here. He will find a way back to his Olivia, to his Walter, no matter what it takes. He has to go home. But the doubts creep in every time he slows down enough to think, because he knows that there still are two possible explanations, even if he wants to believe in only one of them.

What if he's wrong about being from some alternate-alternate universe? What if this one is where he belongs? What if there is no Olivia waiting for him, if there is no home for him out there somewhere?

After all, he shouldn't exist. He was willing to die to save the world, to save both worlds, to save her. So why should he expect a happy ending for himself? What if this is his world, and he is damned to spend the rest of his life knowing that his Olivia is here, but not his?

In his head, he knows that it should be enough that she is alive here, that she didn't pay the price for his mistakes. But when he crawls into bed at night, into the same bed they used to share before he ended a world or saved it, he longs for something more.

His dreams don't help. It seems as though his mind is determined to drive him mad, by playing for him scenes of another life, one where she looked at him with love rather than fear - a life that was more than he ever deserved, and yet was his anyway.

And every morning, he rolls instinctively towards her half of the bed, half awake and fully convinced that he will see her watching him with her quiet smile, waiting for him to wake up and greet the day with her. She's never there, of course, and in this world, she never was. And each time he wakes to an empty bed, his heart breaks a little bit more.

There aren't tears anymore, though; he has cried enough tears for several lifetimes already. Now, he simply feels empty, a hollowed out husk of a man who has lost everything yet again. He knows now that the universe is cruel, giving only to take away - he has lived this enough times to be sure of that.

In other worlds and other times, he had everything.

But here and now, he has only memories.

And even those aren't real.

* * *

_Because I know that time is always time_  
_And place is always and only place_  
_And what is actual is actual only for one time_  
_And only for one place._  
_- Ash Wednesday - T.S. Eliot_


End file.
